Create a Product Placement Campaign with Unity 3D

Introduction

We’re going to assume you’ve already downloaded and installed the ctalyst Unity plugin and have already assigned ctalyst to a GameObject. For this tutorial, we’ve named our object AdHandler. You can pause and rewind the video at any time to review the download and installation process.

The basic steps are:

Log in to your Publisher Dashboard and download the Plugin from the APIs and Tokens module

Name the new object AdHandler and drag and drop the ctalystSDK (from the Assets/DLI/plugins/ctalyst/ folder) onto it

Your Unity 3D scene is now connected to the ctalyst ad network and is ready to go.

Adding Product Placement 3D Models to Your App or Game

We’re going to also assume you’ve added some product placements to your game during your games registration, if you haven’t you can go back and ad some now. For this tutorial we’ve already added a vending machine to our game and we will be using this to demonstrate a product placement.

First login to ctalyst.com, click on the product placement quick button, and view the catalogue. Find the product placement you’re interested in. We’re going to search for Vending, to find our Vending Machine. From the product placements detail view click on Download All (ZIP). In this zip file, you’ll find the low, med, and high poly product placements.

To import your newly downloaded product placement, go to Assets, import new asset, and select your desired fbx, or obj file. In this tutorial we will be using the low poly fbx vending machine model.

The model should now be in your assets folder, go ahead and place it within your scene, rename it, and resize/rotate to fit your game dimensions.

Materials and Texturing

If this product placement does not already have a material attached to it, you can go ahead and attach one now. In our Vending Machines FBX, the material has one already attached. If you do not know how to add materials or textures, there are plenty of great tutorials on the Unity website.

You can use the texture provided with the model as the “default” texture. Or, if you have image editing software such as Photoshop, you can use the included template to create your own default texture. This is the texture that will display by default if there is no internet connection or ads to serve. This guarantees that your ad display spaces will never be empty and look like they belong in your game.

Making the Placement Interactive

The product placement must also be interactive, it must be collide able. We will add a collider to it now.

From the product placements inspector window ensure “is trigger” has been checked.

The product placement is now ready to start serving ads, and we will soon add it to the ctalyst system.

Next we will add the player object, which is the object that the person playing your game controls. For our tutorial, we will make one. Click the GameObject menu, select Create Empty and name it Player. The Player GameObject will interact with the product placement.

From the Unity Project Assets folder, navigate to DLI, plugins, and drag and drop the ctalystPlayerObject component onto the Player that you just created.

From the Unity Hierarchy Window, drag and drop the AdHandler onto the ctalyst Object field in the ctalyst player object panel of the inspector window.

Going LIVE With ctalyst Ad Serving

From the Unity Hierarchy Window, select AdHandler. This will display the ctalyst SDK plugin in the inspector window.

Click Add New.

Drag and drop the Vending Machine from the Unity Hierarchy Window onto the Ad GameObject field of the ctalyst SDK plugin in the Inspector Panel.

Set Ad Type to be placement.

For the Ad Size or Code, on ctalyst.com navigate to API, Token, & Banking, View API’s and tokens and under games, all the product placements added to your game will be there. Now add the corresponding ID to the Ad Size or Code field. If the product placement is not there ensure that it has been added to your game. For this tutorial, our ID for the Vending Machine is 10.

Select the coupon type. The options are landscape or portrait and your choice depends on how you are displaying coupons in the game’s rewards menu.

Ad Priority determines the order that ads are called and served to your game. Zero is the highest priority and will serve first. You can group ads within the same priority.

Level/Scene is a future feature not currently being used. You can safely ignore it.

In-Game and Real-World Rewards

An interactive ad must reward the player during the game play, and must also deliver a coupon for the interaction to the player’s reward menu. See our Unity Code Docs to get examples and how-to’s of different interactive rewards.

That’s it. You’ve now set up an interactive ad.

Press the Play button and see how your ad looks. If the ad is upside down, distorted, or otherwise incorrect, simply go back to the unity editor and correct it.

By default, your account is live and serving sandbox ads. As long as you are internet connected, you will be able to develop and test ctalyst live during your game development.